Bad days and Bartenders
by slef
Summary: Methos is having a bad day. So are others...


Bad days and Bartenders  
By Leoni  
  
"It's a strange thing", Joe mused to himself as he mopped his bar clear of spilled whiskey and half-melted ice splinters. "The way some days go..." You can say what you like about bartenders: How they get to listen to everyone's troubles, how they dispense advice in equal amounts with bottled solace, how they can't help but know people with the tides of humanity flowing through their domains.  
  
But he felt he had a special, extra gift that most bartenders did not have. He had the ability to gauge the mood of an Immortal to a hair's breadth. Of course he had a slight advantage over others in this regard. He knew the Immortals who visited his bar. So perhaps other bartenders, knowing who their Immortal clients were, could do what he does, but he doubted it.  
  
"Take, for example, Methos," Joe thought as the Really Old Guy entered the bar. "He looks as if his world is coming to an end." He would have analysed Methos' appearance further but the old guy gave him no chance.  
  
Finding a bar stool, Methos pulled it out and dragged himself on top of it with a great show of bearing the weight of the world on his shoulders. Having settled, he paused for a fraction of a second before he realised that the stool had been wet with spilled drinks. He closed his eyes for a moment, and then opened them to look somberly at Joe.  
  
"Tell me, Joe," he said slowly. "Have you ever had one of those days where nothing went right?"  
  
Joe nodded, having recognised the signs. "Sure have, buddy. Just last week..."  
  
Methos interrupted him and carried on as if Joe hadn't spoken at all. "It started this morning," he said. "I woke up after a glorious night of uninterrupted sleep, feeling as well as I remember feeling. I was just stretching out, you know, enjoying it, when I realized that I'd overslept." He mimed looking at his watch, looking out the window to see the sun, being shocked. "I jumped out of bed, rushing now because I was really late, and cut myself shaving."  
  
Joe snorted.  
  
"Oh all right," Methos agreed. "That was nothing. Anyway," he continued. "I stormed out without breakfast, jumped in my car and drove as fast as I could to work. No, I did not get a speeding fine."  
  
"So something went right," Joe said, ever the optimist. It earned him an evil look that he filed away under 'Reasons not to upset Methos'.  
  
"So when I got to campus I was 10 minutes late for my class and all the students had left... and today was the day that they were supposed to do lecturer evaluations and I'd trained them so well for that this semester. So then I had to explain to the dean why there was no evaluation done for me. And he told me that that would reflect badly on my performance evaluations..."  
  
Joe chuckled. "You know, you sound just like every other bloke who works 9 to 5. Amazing."  
  
"I might be older than any of you infants, Joe, but I like my comfort zone same as everyone else. I don't like being in trouble, do you?"  
  
"No, of course not," Joe capitulated. "Carry on."  
  
"So I was dejectedly sitting in my office, working on my students' marks, when someone brought me the latest issue of the campus newspaper." He dug for something in his shirt pocket and came up with a rumpled newspaper clipping. "That's it." He tossed it at Joe who rescued it from sogginess millimetres from a puddle.  
  
"Linguistic agility" the headline read.  
  
"According to various sources, Dr. Pierson of the Linguistics Department demonstrated his acrobatic abilities for an appreciative crowd at the student centre today. As this performance was unscheduled, we were unable to obtain a photograph of this event but witnesses report that Dr. P tripped on the edge of the terrace and performed a perfect nose-dive into the flowerbed below. Just goes to show that our academics still get to participate in outdoor activities once in a while."  
  
Joe burst out with laughter, smothering it quickly with a cough, but the chuckles kept pushing through. "When was this?"  
  
"Yesterday," Methos said morosely.  
  
"So you fell?"  
  
"I tripped ... no, I was tripped by a stupid little brick-high wall that had no business being there," Methos explained. "What that article thankfully doesn't say is that the thorns of the roses though which I fell made a real mess of me and my favourite sweater."  
  
"Shame," Joe sympathised, knowing how attached Methos got to his sweaters.  
  
"It's really sad," Methos agreed. "Anyway, with my public humiliation now all that more public, AND archived in the annals of the university, I was about ready to give up and go on a long vacation. I just had to calculate the final marks."  
  
"So?" Joe asked innocently. "That's not so bad."  
  
"Right," Methos said with the sound of bitter experience in his voice. "You'd think so." He stared for a moment at nothing in particular. "I was about half way done when I noticed that my students' names and titles didn't match. Like, Paul Michaels, a big guy, was listed as 'Miss'."  
  
Joe giggled.  
  
"It's not funny!" Methos protested. "Somewhere along the line the spreadsheet had become shuffled. I did some checking and all the marks are mixed up. You have no idea the trouble I'm in." He sounded quite desperate.  
  
Joe could understand that, having had similar experiences when spreadsheet columns got sorted independently from related columns. Poor Methos.  
  
"So after a while I just gave up and came here," Methos concluded. "Where I've sat on a wet bar stool, and where you still haven't given me any beer!"  
  
"Oh, I'm sorry," Joe said, meaning it. As a bartender he had to listen to people's troubles, sure, but his first duty was to serve them drinks. Especially morose 5000-year-old Immortals. He quickly found and opened a bottle of Methos' favourite beer and handed it over.  
  
Methos took the bottle with exaggerated care, swallowed some and stretched back with a satisfied "Aaahhh". At that point his bar stool slipped on a hitherto un-melted piece of ice and deposited him, beer and all, in an undignified heap on the floor.  
  
As Joe and other patrons gasped, Methos yelled from somewhere below the horizon. "See?! What's with this place anyhow? Everything is wet!"  
  
"Mac was here earlier," Joe explained, getting his cloth to mop the countertop again. "He's having a bad day too."  
  
"It's a strange thing..." Joe mused to himself as he mopped his bar clear of spilled beer and half-melted splinters of ice. You can say what you want about bartenders, but in saying it, you should keep in mind that some days are worse than others, even for bartenders.  
  
- fin -  
  
(c) Leoni Venter 3 December 2003  
Written while invigilating a COS160 re-exam.  
  
Disclaimer: Methos, Joe and Immortal lore belong to Rysher: Panzer/Davis. I don't profit from this and only wrote it to amuse myself while being extremely bored. 


End file.
